தமிழ் இணையக் கல்விக்கழகம் - TAMIL VIRTUAL ACADEMY

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HISTORY OF TAMIL LEXICOGRAPHY-3


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    Posed afresh and added by him. Excluding these additions, about 9500 words are dealt with. The later editions fail to distinguish between the original sufras and these additions. There are indications showing that a like process of addition had gone on even prior to the first edition. The original could have been only a work of moderate size though sufficiently comprehensive for the time. Its word-content is now difficult to ascertain, but we may safely assume that it far exveeded the slender vocabulary of Tolkƒppiyam and included not only uri-c-col but all classes of words.

    PINKALANTAI

    The next great collection of class-vocabularies was PiŒakalantai, and it had a vocabulary enlarged in many directions. The author was PiŒakalr, son of a certain Tivƒkarar, doubtfully identified with the author of Tivƒkaram.

    This work is first found mentioned in Na‹‹‡l (sutra 460), a grammar of the 13th century, and may, therefore, be placed between Tiv ƒkaram and Na‹‹‡l.

    There are ten sections in this work; the first nine exhaust the material contained in all the sections of Tivƒkaram except the eleventh. The sixth and the seventh are worked out in great detail and throw valuable light on the corresponding sections in Tivƒkaram. The last deals with homonyms. The number of words dealt with in the first nine sections is about 14,1700.It is obviously a very comprehensive work, as the introductory lines state that it exhausts all the words of all the four kinds mentioned in Tolkƒppiyam. No wonder Na‹‹‡l mentions this work in preference to others of the class.

    Besides Tivƒkaram andPiŒakalantai, there must have been many wordbooks before the 16th century. IIamp‡ra‹ar (about 11th century), the great commentafor on Tolkƒppiyam , quotes a nika--u sutra 1, of which the source is not yet traced. YƒpparuŒkala-virutti gives (page 222) the various senses of the word `n„r apparently from a sutra not found in any of the existing nika--us. commentaries2 on Tivviya-p-pirapantam also quote verses from nika--us.which are now untraceable. There is, in the Madras Government Oriental Manuscripts Library,. a fragment of a nika--us whose authorship is unknown. It contains six sections beginning from the second and it is in the sutra style. We may, therefore, legitimately infer that many works of this classhave been lost by the ravages of time.

    NIKANTU-COTAMANI

    The next extant collection is Nika--u-c‡-ƒm-i. Its author was Ma-dala-puru-a‹, a jaina, and its prefatory stanzas make it clear that he was a chieftain of Virai and disciple of Gunadhadra, a Jaina ƒcƒrya. From a reference in the work3 to KŠ™-arƒya who may be identified with the famous Vijayanagara king of that name, we may tentatively accept the beginning of the 16th ccntury as its date, i.e. about 1520 A.D. 



    1 Collatikƒram 390, commentary
    2 For examples, see ஈடு 1,4,5; 2,2,6; 4,6,7.10th verse of 9th section.


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